My morning ride 2016 03 03 #mybikestory

Spontaneous, out of context post in the more or less randomly created "BIKE COMMUTE STORY", Thursday, March 03.

#mybikestory

I didn't set out to be the guy talking about fog all the time. It just kind of happened. 

It seemed like we were experiencing fairly frequent fogs this past couple of years, more frequent than I remember from the years before that going back to 2000. I'm probably suffering from whatever they call the all too human thing of suddenly seeing lots of examples of something we're interested in that we hadn't noticed before we were interested in it, whatever "it" may be. 

So, I thought, "Why not take a photo or two on foggy commutes?" There's no guarantee that I'll document EVERY foggy morning if for no other reason than I don't work on Sundays and only one Saturday a month. Still, it's better than nothing.

Now that I'm paying attention to fog I can see that there is more than one way to be foggy. Sure, there are similarities between events but the spectrum of possible fog qualities, while not infinite, is fairly broad for ground-hugging clouds.

Thursday was a new point on the spectrum for me.

 The sun was well on its way when I arrived at the Florida Street Levee access. On most if not all of the previous foggy days the fog was vertically thick with another deck of clouds above it. The sun was more an implication or a smudge than a big ball of intensely bright burning hydrogen. Not this day.

When I turned on to Florida Street I knew I was going to stop for a photo. The light was fairly intense compared to the fog hiding the River behind the Levee. 

There must be a huge backlog of barge traffic following the most recent high water. I've noticed a great number of barges lining both banks of the River as I ride. There has also been a "raft" of barges moored in the River right off the Florida Street access. I doubt it's the same raft but there has been something there for weeks.

The fog was thickest over the River, especially in the center of the channel and those places near the bank where colder water ran. The further from those places the thinner the fog but there was fog up and across River Road. I very seldom notice the land side of the Levee but looking at and for fog brought downtown into focus, oddly enough.

The Paper Clip was in a very thin fog illuminated by the bright morning light. The KIDD was particularly interesting. Blue sky and fog . . . I hadn't noticed this before.

With all the recent run off the River is REALLY heavy with silt. I wish they would re-open the distributaries they closed over the past nearly-100 years and hope it would at least slow the erosion of the coast. Too much money invested in really stupid locations to do that though. Better to erase the state than hurt someone's profits.

I arrived at work having passed in and out of various degrees of obscurity. That proved to be the metaphor for my day.